Always the Quiet Ones
by Shinoko
Summary: Someone among the task force has commited a heinous crime, and L intends to find out who it was.


**Disclaimer:** Death Note is not mine / I make no claims otherwise / Gently flowing breeze  
**Time Frame:** This story takes place during the two month time skip when Light & L were chained together where nothing important happens. (Chapter 38/39 manga, episode 18 anime.) Onwards!

-- -- --

L glared around the room where all of the task force members had gathered. Yagami and Aizawa occupied a couple of chairs that had been brought in, while Matsuda stood by them with a look of utter confusion on his face. Mogi stood silently toward the back, not allowing any expression to get past his stoic features. And Light sat in his chair next to L, not quite as confused as everyone else, as he had a vague suspicion of what L had called everyone in for, unbelievable as it was. As confused as everyone may or may not have been, those feelings of confusion had only escalated when L demanded that Misa and Watari be present as well. The inhabitants of the room kept exchanging puzzled glances and shrugs as L continued to glare at them. Once everyone was present, L spoke.

"As I'm sure all of you know by now, yesterday a truly horrendous crime was committed by someone in this room. Someone whose transgression cannot and will not be forgiven! All of you are suspect, and I wish for the perpetrator to confess to their crime. I am referring, of course, to yesterday's incident when someone took it upon himself to spike my cake with laxatives! Nobody leaves this room until I discover who it was!" He slammed his hand on his work station for emphasis, causing the chain that connected him and Light to rattle violently.

Light put his head between his hands, suspicions confirmed. "This is so stupid..."

L turned to him, eyes livid. "Is that a confession? As Kira, spiking my cake with laxatives is something I would expect you to do!"

Light glanced up to him. "How many times must I say it? I'm not Kira, and I didn't spike anything with laxatives!" He raised his left hand, allowing the chain to rattle and make its presence known. "Besides, with us chained together, do you honestly think I would want to spike anything of yours with laxatives? Yesterday was no picnic for me, either."

L took a moment to consider that. As he did so, Misa marched over to Light, grabbing one of his arms possessively. "Yeah, we were supposed to go on a date yesterday! How do we know that you didn't spike the cake yourself to prevent Misa from going on a date with her Light?"

L glared at her. "What makes you so sure that it was a cake that was spiked? It could have been anything that I consumed yesterday. Highly suspicious, Amane-san."

"Didn't you say that it was your _cake _that had been spiked not even a minute ago?" the elder Yagami pointed out, causing L to pause.

"Yes..." the detective bit down on his thumb. "I suppose I did say it was my cake that was spiked..." He shook his head. "Be that as it may, I would never defile a perfectly good cake, nor would I subjugate myself to such an unpleasant experience. And as I said before, I will not stop you from going on dates, but I will be there. Which leads me to your motive: By spiking my cake with laxatives, you were hoping that I would unchain Light-kun from myself, thus allowing you to go on a date with him alone and plot everyone's murder! What you weren't counting on was the fact that I would not unlock Light-kun from myself--"

"Unfortunately," Light muttered under his breath.

"--Thus foiling your fiendish plans of getting Light alone and killing us all!"

Misa stared at him in disbelief. There was silence for a few moments, until she asked, "Are you on drugs, Ryuzaki?"

Aizawa sighed. "Can we please go back to the Kira investigation? All this talk about 'who spiked what with what' will not help us catch Kira."

L looked to him. "Aizawa-san... You only make your motive clearer."

"What?"

"Let me explain..." L stood to walk closer to the rest of the task force, but Light stubbornly stayed put where he was, with Misa attached to one arm. L glared at them, then looked back to the task force. "Your irritation over talks of Light-kun and Amane-san is apparent. You wish to get back to the task at hand. So what better way than to prevent a date between the two of them? You know that I will not remove the chains that bind Light-kun and myself for any reason, so forcing one of us to be in no shape to be present for a date of any kind would cause their planned date to be cancelled."

Aizawa sighed. "Fine. I'll play along with this if it gets us back to the real investigation any sooner. At no point of time was I anywhere near anything you consumed, whether it was cake or coffee or one of the thousands of sugar cubes you devour on an hourly basis." He pointed to Matsuda. "Although I do recall him bringing you coffee multiple times yesterday. It might have been the coffee that was spiked."

Matsuda's eyes widened. "Me?!" He pointed to himself. "Why would I--"

L glared at him. "Tired of having nothing else to do except for bringing coffee to various members of the investigation--"

"I do more than just bring people coffee!" Matsuda interjected.

L continued as though he wasn't interrupted. "--You decided to take your revenge by pulling off a stunt so heinous, that you knew would put a halt to the investigation and bring attention to yourself. You, who otherwise feel neglected and left out, would find a way to be noticed by any means necessary. And what better way that to pull a stunt so juvenile, it practically has your name written all over it?"

Matsuda just gave him a flat look. "You're not the only one who drank coffee yesterday. But you are the only one who ate the cakes and other sweets brought in by Watari." He looked to the older gentleman, who had been watching on amusedly up until this point. L's gaze turned to his man-servant.

Watari started. "Me? While I did bring in cakes and sweets, they had already been prepared at the bakeries where I had purchased them from. I could not have tampered with them, as I'm sure you would have noticed."

L considered that. "Yes, but you too have a motive. Jealousy." He stood up and attempted to pace the room, but found that the chain that bound him to Light made doing so rather difficult, so he gave up attempting to pace. "Jealous of the fact that it is I that get all the attention, you decided that you wanted some time to take center stage. But with me in the way, how could you? And so you figured that you would get me out of the picture so you could come in and take all the glory! But ultimately your plan failed, as I'm on to you..." He allowed his voice to trail off as once more, silence fell over the room.

Watari cleared his throat. "Allow me to repeat Amane's earlier question. Are you on drugs of any sort? Perhaps crack?"

L sighed, then turned to the elder Yagami. "Yagami-san. You, too, have a motive."

"Of course I do," the officer stated flatly, clearly annoyed by the proceedings.

L nodded. "Yes. Bothered by the fact that I suspect your son in being Kira, and even more bothered by the fact that I would chain myself to him, you decided to use any means necessary to get me to unchain myself from him."

"...Naturally." Sarcasm dripped from his voice. Logic had apparently left the building long ago.

"So I know now who it was that spiked my cake with laxative!" L declared. He looked around at everyone. "Let's go over the suspects, shall we?" He cleared his throat. "Light-kun, your motive, which would be to have us unchained, would normally put you on equal ground as Amane-san and Yagami-san, who both share similar motives. However, I do believe that would be countered by your knowledge that I would not unchain us under any circumstance."

Light sighed. "True. If I _really _wanted you to unchain us, I'd leave some gay porn around for you to find and borrow Misa's skirts while singing 'I Feel Pretty'." Silence. Everyone gave Light odd looks. "Not that I would do that, or anything."

"...Is that where some of my skirts went?" Misa mused out loud.

"I must apologize, Ryuuzaki," Watari said. "I did believe those magazines were yours, but just didn't want to say anything about them."

L glanced to them, and then backed away from Light as far as the chain would allow. "Percentage of you being Kira has just gone up by six percent. Likelihood of you having spiked my cake is one percent, as I do not think that you would subject yourself to the end result. Likelihood of you being gay or at the least bisexual is at 85 percent." He turned to Aizawa. "Your likelihood of having spiked my cake is also at one percent, as while you have motive, you lacked opportunity. Ten percent to Yagami-san and twenty-five to Amane-san. Truth be told, I do not suspect Mogi-san at all," he pointed to the silent member of the task force, who had been watching with his trademark stoic expression on his face the entire time, "as I cannot think of a single reason as to why he would lower himself to such a low-brow stunt. However--" He turned to Watari and Matsuda. "The two of you..."

"It was him!" They both said at the same time, pointing to one another.

L contemplated them. "Both of you have the motive. Both of you crave the attention that you would get if I were out of the picture, and perhaps crave a little slice of revenge on the side. Speaking of which, a nice cheesecake with strawberries would be nice right about now." He shook his head. "I digress, however. Both had the opportunity. Watari by bringing cakes, Matsuda-san by bringing coffee. And as mentioned, if the cakes had been tampered with after they had already been baked, by before I had consumed them, I would have noticed. That isn't to say that I don't suspect the workers in the bakeries, but they lack motive. All things considered, I place Watari at sixty-nine percent likelihood and Matsuda at eighty-eight!"

Matsuda snickered. "Sixty-nine... I mean, it wasn't me!"

L ignored him. "Now the only question is how to deal with you..."

Soon, the room was filled with suggestions on how best to retaliate against Matsuda, much to his protests, particularly when tarring and feathering was mentioned.

Mogi allowed himself a slight smile as he silently watched. Sure, bringing in the laxative-spiked brownies yesterday morning had been a gamble, as it was possible that someone other than L might decide to eat one, however doubtful that might have been. The end result couldn't have been more satisfying, however. Not only had he pranked the world's greatest detective, but he had gotten away with it without even being suspected.

He wondered just who it was he was going to prank next.

-- -- --

**End**


End file.
